John Russell Taylor

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John Russell Taylor (born June 19, 1935) is an English critic and author. He is the author of critical studies of British theatre; of critical biographies of such important figures in Anglo-American film as Alfred Hitchcock, Alec Guinness, Orson Welles, Vivien Leigh, and Ingrid Bergman; of Strangers in Paradise: The Hollywood Emigres 1933-1950 (1983); and some books on art.

Personal

Taylor was born in in Dover, the son of Arthur Russell and Kathleen Mary (Picker) Taylor and now lives in London and West Wales^[1]. He attended Dover Grammar School, took a first in English at Jesus College, Cambridge and studied Art Nouveau book illustration at the Courtauld Institute of Art^[2].

Career

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In the 1960s he wrote on cinema for Sight and Sound and the Monthly Film Bulletin, on the theatre in Plays and Players, on television for The Listener and "The Times Educational Supplement", and on various subjects relating to the arts for the Times Literary Supplement. From the late 1950s he began writing anonymously on television and theatre for The Times, and by 1962 he had become the paper's film critic, initially anonymous but later named after the paper abandoned its "anonymity rule" in January 1967 when William Rees-Mogg became editor. During this era he wrote a number of books including Anger and After: A Survey of the New British Drama (1962), titled "The Angry Theatre" in the USA; revised and expanded and published in paperback (1969); Anatomy of a Television Play (1962), concerning the Armchair Theatre productions Afternoon of a Nymph and "The Rose Affair"; Cinema Eye, Cinema Ear: Some Key Film-Makers of the Sixties (1964); and The Art Nouveau Book in Britain (1966). Subsequently he wrote "The Penguin Dictionary of the Theatre" (1966) and "The Art Dealers" (1969). In 1969 he was a member of the jury at the Berlin International Film Festival (IMDb "filmography"), and since then has frequently been on juries at other festivals, including Delhi, Venice, Krakow, Istanbul, Troja, Parnu, Rio de Janeiro, Montreal and, several times, the Chicago International Film Festival.

In the early 1970s Taylor wrote the book The Second Wave: British Drama of the Sixties, a follow-up to Anger and After, and several television plays, including a version of "Dracula" with Denholm Elliott in the title role, which was praised by Kingsley Amis as the best ever. In 1972, he moved to California, to teach film at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, serving as a Professor of Cinema from 1972 to 1978 ("John Russell Taylor" at the Encyclopædia Britannica Online), while continuing to contribute to The Times and "Sight and Sound", and to The New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times. During this period, he wrote Directors and Directions: Cinema for the Seventies (1975).

Having developed a friendship with Alfred Hitchcock during the 1970s, he became Hitchcock's authorised biographer. ^[3] In 1978, after publishing Hitch, Taylor returned to the UK, becoming the art critic for The Times, a post that he held until 2005. His books since 1978 include "Strangers in Paradise: The Hollywood Emigres 1933-1950"(1983), and bio-critical studies of Ingrid Bergman (1983), Alec Guinness (1984), Vivien Leigh (1984), Orson Welles (1986), Elizabeth Taylor (1991), and the artists Edward Wolfe (1986), Bernard Meninsky (1990), Muriel Pemberton (1993), Ricardo Cinalli (1993),Claude Monet (1995), Bill Jacklin (1997), Cyril Mann (1997) Peter Coker (2002), Zsuzsi Roboz (2005), Carl Laubin (2007) and Philip Sutton (2008). More general books on art include "Impressionist Dreams" (1990) and "Exactitude: Hyperrealist Art Today" (2009).

Since 2005 he has contributed regularly to The Times on art and film subjects, and reviewed drama for "Plays International". He was also editor of the magazine Films and Filming from 1983 until its closure in 1990.

References

• Taylor, John Russell. The Angry Theatre: New British Drama. 1962. Rev. ed. New York: Hill & Wang, 1969. ISBN 9780809026630. (Revised and expanded edition of Anger and After: A Guide to the New British Drama.)

External links

• "John Russell Taylor" at Encyclopædia Britannica Online, All about Oscar. Accessed May 7, 2008.
• John Russell Taylor at the Internet Movie Database. Accessed May 7, 2008. ("Filmography".)
• "John Russell Taylor Biography (1935– )" at filmreference.com. Accessed May 7, 2008.